In an effort to preserve the everglades at least partially, Floridians expressed their concerns over shrinking resources at the dusk of the 20th century. The year 1916 marks the creation of the Royal Palm State Park that acquired the status of a national park in 1923 (Tebeau 1963). In 1928, the ‘Tropical Everglades National Park Commission’ led by Ernest F. Coe began to explore the formation of a protected area. Since then, everyone called the man as Father of Everglades National Park that originally embraced more than 2,000,000 acres (Robertson 1989).
For almost a century, Florida Everglades National Park holds a status of the U.S. National Park protecting about 20% of the original Everglades southwards. The park is the biggest tropical wilderness in the United States hosting more than one million visitors annually. Following Death Valley and Yellowstone, this is the third largest national park in the country also attributed as the World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and a Wetland of International Importance (Whitney et al. 2004).
Originally, the Floridians created the park to to protect rather vulnerable and fragile ecosystem. The Everglades comprise the network of forests and wetlands. The Park serves as the core breeding spot for tropical wading birds in North America. The Park’s strategic importance also consists in the greatest mangrove ecosystem ever found in the western hemisphere, The Park hosts 36 endangered species, such American crocodile, Florida panther, and West Indian manatee among many others. The Park facilitates 300 species of fish and about 350 species of birds, 50 species of reptiles and 40 species of mammals.
On December 13, 1989, President George Bush signed the Everglades National Park Protection and Expansion Act that enlarged the eastern side of the park with additional 109,506 acres. The Park’s ecosystem is rich and diverse integrating native species of plants and animals. While the 1989 Act allowed the Park’s restoration its natural flow of water, still in 1993, it joined the black list of World Heritage in Danger (McCally 1999).
Part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), in 2000, the Congress decided to restore the Everglades. The wider plan consisted in restoring, preserving and protecting the South Florida ecosystem and meeting the water-related needs of the state. While the scale of the effort seemed the largest environmental restoration ever made, there were considerable hindrances under way, including poor technologies, insufficient water quality, as well as other delays and subsidizes. Eventually, Floridian activists and Biodiversity Legal Foundation blamed the National Audubon Society for gaining business and agricultural benefits from the project (Davis 2009).
In 2005, the Park embraced the budget exceeding $28 million, including the funds delivered by the National Park Service, CERP projects, grants and donations. The Park created mainly 900 jobs and benefited local economies with $35 million (Davis 2009).
Overall, more than 50 different CERP projects split by 5-year timelines covered the spending of staggering $10.5 billion over three decades (2000-2030). The State of Florida alone has spent unprecedented $2 billion to restore the Everglades, though the the U.S. government did not match the funds. In June 2008, the federal government spent mere $400 million out of total $7.8 billion. According to the National Research Council report in September 2008, there was no successful completion of any CERP project mainly due to the insufficient water delivery to the Park. After removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2007, the Park joined the list anew in 2010.
Following drainage efforts, 50 percent of the Everglades have remained intact so far. The population of wading birds decreased by staggering 90 percent from the 1940s to 2000s. For the time being, the water diversion suits the ever-growing metropolitan areas and presents the major threat to the Park. Low water levels leave make fish prone to birds and reptiles, whily drying of sawgrass kills apple snails and animals that are main food for wading birds (Davis 2009).
- Davis, J. 2009, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, University of Georgia Press.
- McCally, D. 1999, The Everglades: An Environmental History. University Press of Florida.
- Robertson, W. 1989, Everglades: The Park Story. Florida National Parks & Monuments Association.
- Tebeau, C. 1963, They Lived in the Park: The Story of Man in the Everglades National Park, University of Miami Press.
- Whitney, E. et al., eds. 2004, Priceless Florida: Natural Ecosystems and Native Species, Pineapple Press.
